Mr. Sidney Herbert, who was supposed to be of the High Church persuasion, had scented the difficulty from the first, as we have heard, and Miss Nightingale was keenly alive to it. They had desired to make the first party of nurses representative of all the leading sects; but owing to the abstention of a Protestant institution, the Roman Catholics and the High Church party were in a considerable majority among the thirty-eight nurses. This fact gave the alarm, and a sectarian hue-and-cry was immediately raised. It began, as I am sorry to have to say, in the _Daily News_; it was taken up, as goes without saying, in the so-called "religious press." On October 28, 1854, when Miss Nightingale was on her way to Scutari, an attack upon her was given great prominence in the first-named paper. It was signed "Anti-Puseyite," and it included the text of Mr. Herbert's letter which had somehow or other been obtained.[161] "Miss Nightingale recruited her staff of nurses from Miss Sellon's house [a High Church one] and from a Romanist establishment." This awful fact explained "the party spirit which actuated the choice of Miss Nightingale for this important and responsible office, and which set aside Lady Maria Forester"--a lady, it seems, of Evangelical principles. It was not yet too late to remedy the offence "if the feeling of the nation be at once aroused and expressed." "A Reader of the Bible" and other correspondents followed, and the controversy raged furiously. Mrs. Sidney Herbert's intervention, with an assurance that Miss Nightingale was somewhat Low Church, did not stop it. S. G. O. referred to it in his book. "I have heard and read," he wrote, "with indignation the remarks hazarded upon her religious character. Her works ought to answer for her faith. If there is blame in looking for a Roman Catholic priest to attend a dying Romanist, let me share it with her--I did it again and again."[162] An admirable avowal, but not calculated, I fear, to allay the anger of "No Popery" fanatics. The publication of Queen Victoria's letter of December 6 (p. 215), showing the confidence which Her Majesty placed in Miss Nightingale, did something to stem the tide, but for many months the feud flowed on in the press. [161] See above, p. 154 _n._ [162] _Scutari and its Hospitals_, p. 26. II